Fast forward to now and well… what a year to choose to go full time self-employed, what a donkey – talk about jumping in at the deep end. Saying that, we have managed it… and not only managed it but our business has grown in unexpected ways. We are no longer just… me, we’ve managed to recruit our awesome team, definitely the best decision of the year. Not only that but because of the “unprecedented circumstances” (how many times have we said that this year?) we’ve seen new opportunities for growth.

I should say here, that this little blog is really a form of therapy for me. I always like writing them randomly throughout the year as an opportunity to reflect and absorb what we’ve managed to achieve.

Naively, I seemed to be plodding on with daily business completely oblivious to what was on the way in March and fairly confident they’d “never shut us down”. Well… yeh, we know how that ended…

Like everyone, we saw our exciting year of events slowly getting postponed or cancelled, our shop was forced to close and I was left clearing out the garage trying to keep myself busy – it took 3 days until I broke. Emma & I decided we should try and do something and within 24 hours we, well Emma, had set up an online booking system and thought we’d see what happens. I’d have been happy with a couple of bookings a day, just enough to keep me sane. Within a week we started to see our bookings completely fill up and in the peak of the first lockdown, and with extended hours, we saw our deliveries fill up 2 weeks in advance… nuts!

We cautiously concluded that we’d quite like the deliveries to carry on after July when things started to reopen so made the decision to employ someone to help, that quickly turned to 2 people and increased hours. I’m pretty much winging my way through running a business and our aims this year have changed on a weekly basis so increasing our team has been such an awesome and beneficial step forward.

We close out the year still running deliveries, attending weekly corporate pop ups, ploughing on with increasing our shop sales and looking forward to next year. I try not to look back and think of the things we haven’t been able to do this year, the events we should have done and have everything crossed for 2021.

I know I said I’m not going to say it again but honestly, all being well, next year really is set to be a good one, if not a little stressful, busy & exciting... If we can get COVID in the bin by Easter, I’ll be happy.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us this year, honestly if you’ve offered advice, purchased a coffee or booked a delivery you’re all helping us get our little business a step closer to the original dream, so… thank you.

Sam 